The megapixel race seems to be over (at least for the moment), and the manufacturers have by and large regained their senses. The focus has shifted from boosting the megapixel count to increasing the quality of pictures taken and improving upon the feature set offered.

One feature that has remained elusive in mobile phones is optical zoom. The major prohibiting factor is obviously the bulk added by the protruding optical zoom capable lens. Back in March, Spice had launched a 12 megapixel camera phone with 3x optical zoom. Now LG has entered the arena with its LG Viewty Snap GM360.

The Viewty Snap features a 5 megapixel camera with optic-all zoom and LED flash. Optic-all zoom is LG’s special zooming technology which can magnify images without sacrificing quality. At the same time, it doesn’t require bulky lenses associated with traditional optical zoom capable devices. LG isn’t saying much about the magnification level possible. In fact, they aren’t saying much about the rest of the features either.

However, we do know that it will have a 3 inch TFT touchscreen display with 256K colors at a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels, MP3/WMA/eAAC+ audio player, MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player, FM Radio, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP. Social Networking, Email, SMS and MMS capabilities are obviously present. What is missing though is GPS and 3G support.

The Viewty Snap could have been a killer camera phone. But, it probably wouldn’t be. It’s perplexing that LG didn’t include Xenon flash in a camera phone. The megapixel count is also lower than most other camera phones in the market. Let’s hope that LG is using a damn good optics. In the end, everything will most probably come down to the pricing. If Viewty Snap GM360 is cheap enough, LG might just manage to win over casual buyers looking for a stylish touchscreen phone with a decent camera.

(Image via GSM Arena)